Roar
Watched this for a third(!) time, my feelings on this move are well documented but Mandy who was watching it for the first time said it was the worst movie she’s ever seen :/
Crouching tiger Hidden Dragon
Damn dude, this still rules. When I first saw it I was more of a film snob and really focused on the writing and beautiful cinematography, now that I’m older and dumber I focused primarily on how dope the fight scenes were. And they are so dope.
Captive State
Very grim unique movie resting on the premise that if we were invaded by aliens that people high up in power structures would quickly sell everyone out in order to maintain any amount of hierarchical advantage they enjoyed previously. Told meticulously from the perspective of the human terrorist sect, with lots of nuts and bolts operational stuff. Structurally really interesting, has a second act composed of a huge looping detour that meets up with the main story for the third. Quietly smart, not wearing it’s brain on top of it’s head a la Arrival other ‘thoughtful sci fi’ movies, a genre that (as I predicted *toot toot) has been obliterated by our current state of affairs.
Memoirs of a Geisha
Didn’t finish this movie so this isn’t really a review. I would just like to point out though, that it came out in 2004, was produced by generally progressive guy Steven Spielberg, and although set it Japan has a primarily chinese cast speaking english for the whole movie. Apocalypto was made in 2006, by extremely unchill Mel Gibson, featured a cast of Native American and Indigenous Mexican actors and was spoken entirely in the indigenous Yucatec Maya language.
The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley
I kinda think the filmmaker Alex gibney is bullshit tbh. Dude knows how to make a documentary but he just kinda picks sensational hit non-fiction books, lets them do all the heavy lifting and research, then basically films them afterwards. Maybe I’m way off on this one but it just seems like it’s his M.O. between this and Going Clear. As far as the movie goes though, it’s fun. Elizabeth Holmes is a wild lady who is fun/scary to look at and ponder and I, like a seemingly large subset of America am enjoying these tales of flim flam artists trying to maintain a constructed reality while it crumbles around them.
Captain Marvel
After initial reviews said it wasn’t good I drew a hard line in the sand saying that I was not going to see it. Then someone asked me if I wanted to see it, so I went. Guess what? It’s another totally fine and fun Marvel movie. More of the extremely “do you like these movies? Then you’ll like this one” vibe. Samuel L Jackson really cruises with a great energy, the Skrulls are super funny and the main one has an Australian accent which rules, and there’s a cute cat. Not as distinctive and good as Thor:Ragnorak and Black Panther but miles better than Avengers: Infinity War which honestly, totally sucked.
The Matrix
Used it’s twentieth anniversary as an excuse to revisit this movie I haven’t seen in since it came out. Not the most philosophically interesting Keanu Reeves action movie from the 90s (that would be Speed) or the best Wachowski siblings movie (that would be Speed Racer). Holds up as a pretty entertaining watch until post ‘I know Kung fu’ sequence where it starts to drag and turn into a real bummer, though it does have for my money it’s best scene at the very end of the movie (Keanu absentmindedly fights Agent Smith with one hand, then flexes reality after beating him). Unfortunately we’re currently living in something of a post truth/reality society so a lot of the Matrixs gentle riffs on big ideas don’t seem as much fun anymore, and drawing a line from q supporters to anti vaxxers to this movie isn’t a stretch. Pairing that with an extremely slick ‘cool’ sequence where two people walk into an office building and kill everyone in sight with machine guns, because “they’re not real people” and you’ve got a recipe for a troubling vibe in 2019. It’s heavy a real touchstone movie, and if we’re still here in 20 years I’m looking forward to checking in with it again to see how deep those ripples went.