ALT A satire movie that's maddeningly confrontational about the nature and purpose of satire itself. The depictions of Rockwell and everyone else involved in this farcical climate disaster are hammy as hell, ultimately ring hollow, and the movie wouldn't work nearly as well if it didn't. It's incredibly in our faces about why we're satisfied with laughing at bumbling caricatures of the people ruining our world and just living on in those ruins. I've seen so many responses to this film be "yeah we're fucked" and I find that such a shallow read of a movie that wants to prompt you to think about why you accept that as the way it is. It's opening the door for that train of thought, but it knows that's about all the power it has to do. The virtual smear campaign put on it makes a lot more sense after having seen it on the big screen myself. Other rapid fire thoughts: Sound design is immaculate, Tom Cruise is very nuanced in his role, really love the set design's attention to detail.

ALT Was really surprised by how different this felt from either of the previous movies, going for a much more mature and emotional story. It's less wide-reaching in its commentary, but I think that allows it to be more focused in its exploration of religion on a personal level. Jud's arc of staying true to his belief in it as a vehicle for healing and forgiveness, actively rejecting how it was used as a weapon for Wicks to beat down on an opposition, shows his strength as the emotional core of the story. I really like its role of Blanc's more emotional involvement in the story as well, particularly in the final reveals. Its cinematography is easily the best out of all three of these movies, the lighting especially is incredibly evocative. This alleviated my fears of current Rian Johnson potentially being a one-trick pony and I'm way more excited to see what comes next, whether it's a new Knives Out or not.

ALT Impressive as a debut film for Tarantino. While it's more restrained visually than other works I've seen from him the editing is still very snappy and it's got a ton of great shots. Also has just as sharp and excellently flowing dialogue, even if you could tell that Tarantino was giggling and kicking his feet whenever he wrote a slur. I really like how it structurally plays around with time, with the whole movie being focused on the aftermath of a heist gone wrong and working backwards from there. What kinda brings it down for me is that the actual twist of who the rat was is really obvious and most of the third act is dedicated to unveiling that twist. Still not a movie-breaker, it's a pretty solid time all around.

ALT Pulp in its purest form. It leans almost entirely on its out there conceptual ideas and back to back twists, both of which I think are very effectively done. Its concept is akin to a more existentially terrifying Tron, and the lengths that it goes to really surprised me. I've heard Matrix comparisons before, especially since both came out the same year, but this is much more going for a noir crime thriller vibe which I think it pulls off. All that being said, it winds up feeling more like an outline for a good story than a really good one on its own. That's mostly down to the core characters being kinda flat, both in writing and performances. (Vincent D'Onofrio is mostly an exception to this, he's pretty entertaining) Craig Bierko really didn't work for me as Douglas, he delivers most of his lines like he's in an english dub of a PS2 game and has to work with very clunky dialogue. It's a decent enough piece of cyber noir, but not likely one that I'm gonna think about much later.

ALT Fair warning I'm gonna be spoiling the main twist of it since that's where the bulk of my thoughts on it lie. Anyway, this was a great time. It's shooting for much bigger spectacle than Knives Out which does lead to it feeling a tad bloated in places, but comes it pays off really well in its final act. I love how the whole conceit of this mystery both in universe and on a meta sense is greatly overestimating the prowess of its Elon Musk stand-in and treating him as anything more than a shallow opportunist who wants to be seen as a genius. It definitely is really heavy-handed in its social commentary with its wider cast being more caricatures, but frankly they feel like they have more interiority than some of the actual people they're meant to be caricatures of.

ALT Spike Lee's approach of telling "One of the 8 million stories in the Naked City" makes this much more of a wide-reaching examination of the time this takes place in. Despite being given a lot of time, this movie isn't really about the Son of Sam killer at all but rather how his looming presence haunted people of New York that he'd never cross paths with even once. We see this community in the Bronx tear themselves apart and even turn on each other in paranoia of this unknowable serial killer roaming around compounding the already building tensions between each other. John Leguizamo is unbelievably good as Vinny, someone who's regularly forced to confront the issues ripping his life to shreds but keeps on deflecting it to other outside forces and never being fully honest with the people he's closest to. The small group here says so much about the pain and trauma that was eating New York alive over this summer. Also this might be the most unbelievable Adrien Brody's ever looked.

ALT A thoughtful and gripping historical drama that drenches itself in so many different layers around the time period and cultures at play. I'm hard pressed to think of any other story I've experienced, anime or otherwise, that's displayed such a clear and well-educated picture of Persian and Mongolian culture as this has. Sitara's an excellent showcase of this, with her upbringing as a slave in Persia having such a major influence on her beliefs, her pursuit of knowledge and the complex feelings surrounding the Mongol empire as she keeps the fire of revenge burning in her heart. I don't think I need to explain how gorgeous this show is from head to toe, a testament to Naoko Yamada and Abel Gongora's immense talents. The biggest badge of honor I can give the show is that it's made me more interested in doing my own research on this pocket of time.

ALT Glad I took the time to think through some of my complicated feelings cause I came out of it really liking what it accomplishes. Its incredibly sensationalized directing and portrayal of Chris Hansen manages to sidestep coming off as hypocritical by being more about the culture around TCAP. Both through how audiences take it in and how the production staff shoot further and further to sensationalize the show for higher ratings that it stops being about the justice they're convinced the show is built upon. It portrays Hansen as a man that believes in his own hype and lets it overtake how he views everything around him. My favorite detail about the whole movie is how fiercely focused they are on competing with Lost, seeing the spectacle as why more people are watching it and not that it taps more into real human emotions through fiction than how TCAP makes outlandish characters out of real people. Shoutouts to Robert Pattinson, he gives a borderline Nic Cage performance and it really hit

ALT A miraculous modern masterpiece, a genuine contender for the best anime of the decade. It uses the original story of The Little Mermaid as a jumping off point for a fascinating exploration of the nuances of love and the complicated feelings that swirl around the concept. It tackles the idea of the conception of "true love", this immediate spark of an exact union that sweeps you off your feet, and shows how it manifests in different complex places, sometimes needs more time to build or even won't work out with someone you dedicate it to. It's a very mature take on the idea that shows the blossoming love between a girl that closes off a lot of her own feelings and another girl that's truly figuring out how to parse her own. Not to mention that it's utterly breathtaking in how it's presented. Koide's directing debut is everything I could've hoped for. It's beautifully animated, has varied character designs for everyone from the main to background characters and has stunning use of color.