Blast of Silence - Must watch if you have Criterion Channel. Low budget, voyeuristic noir with a solid hard boiled narration set in grimy 60s NYC during Christmas. Channels a lot of the same melancholic feelings you get after coming back to your hometown post-college, just with a loner hitman prognostic. Short and not sweet. 8.5/10
Catching up on some of the films released this year* that I missed out on M3gan - 5/10 Was hoping I'd like this more than I did. Fun in parts, for sure, but a lot of the jokes just didn't land for me. Mostly forgettable, but I did lose it whenever Megan started singing. Talk to Me - 7/10 Very cool premise. There's a really fun séance montage scene near the middle, and it's genuinely scary in parts , thinking specifically about Riley in the bathroom. Liked this a lot. No Hard Feelings - 4/10 The only thing I knew about this before watching was that it was a "raunchy throwback comedy", which it was, I guess. Unfortunately, it reminded me why I haven't felt the need to watch a Judd Apatow movie since I was a teenager. Jennifer Laurence was fine, and the kid does a decent Michael Cera impression, but this was mostly just boring. Bottoms - 8/10 An instant classic. I’m glad this never took itself too seriously, because it is at its best when it gets extremely goofy, which is often. Completely embraces how absurd it is in a way that I wish more comedies would. The funniest movie I've seen all year. Eastern Promises - 7/10 The most straightforward Cronenberg I've watched to date, and the first of his that I've seen that was written by somebody else. On the surface it feels like the kind of B-movie my dad would have watched in 2007, but but there's a surprising depth to the characters and a gripping narrative that I wasn't expecting. Also Viggo Mortensen gets his dick out and puts a cigarette out on his tongue. Probably falls second in my Cronenberg ranking, just behind The Fly.
Shin Godzilla - 8.5/10 Maybe just a tad too much bureaucratic stuff, which is obviously the point and is boring in the best way, but man, aside from some jargon, this is so, so good and maybe the closest Godzilla film in spirit to the original that I've seen. The boardroom stuff juxtaposed against the destruction scenes mostly just makes them better. Godzilla looks absolutely insane and low-key sick. A very good and interesting film, let alone a great Godzilla film. Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 - 6.5/10 This is hardly a Christmas movie, but it is a Garbage Day movie. As a sequel, it kinda sucks because of the recycled footage, and as a standalone film, it's nearly incomprehensible, but as a compilation of holiday-adjacent slasher scenes? It's fun enough! A Troll 2-level lead performance that needs to be seen to be believed!
Jingle All the Way is really fucking great until the last 20 minutes. As soon as the parade hijinks begin, everything fun about the movie dissipates.
Okay apologies in advance because I know some people on this site like this movie, Not trying to yuck anyone's yum, it was just very much not for me. Sanctuary - 3/10 A movie that desperately wants to say something about power dynamics -- and occasionally, comes close -- but ultimately throws away any nuance in favor of over-the-top theatrics and try-hard monologues. Abbott does his best with what he's given and Qualley is trying...something here, so points for that I guess, but the film's tone is so bafflingly inconsistent -- camp that wants to be taken seriously -- that it fails to do nearly anything right. A sporadically interesting failure that proves some ideas are better left on paper. Watch The Beta Test instead.
Jingle All The Way is good all the way through even at the end when he apologizes to that cop for essentially ruining his life!