100 Meters - 10/10 I don’t like sports anime, but I heard the movie is worth it for the animation. It was stunning. Especially one race scene that lasted several minutes and took 10,000 hand drawn frames. It was insane. In a just world, this would win best animated film.
10 to Midnight - 7/10 Le Samouraï - 9.5/10 Breaker! Breaker! - 5/10 47 Meters Down - 4.5/10 Hamnet - 9.5/10
I actually strongly disagree. Him up at 2am infuriating Joan Baez playing the same line over and over and over trying to get one line is the closest thing to realism I've seen in one of these. So much better than Freddie Mercury being given "Bohemian Rhapsody" in like a vision from god.
I liked that scene, though that one felt less like a song writing exploration and more like Bob there to toy with Joan. But there’s a few more scenes where songs just kind of appear. Like Al Kooper just immediately jumping in with the organ riff for Like A Rolling Stone. This is miles better than Bohemian Rhapsody, but too much of it still felt cliche.
I will say, by all accounts...that's actually what happened with Al on "Like a Rolling Stone". Haha. He was along as a guest and wasn't supposed to play on the session but just said "I think I have an idea" in the control room and they didn't actively tell him no. Dylan was notoriously a guy who just kept doing takes until eventually the band happened on something he liked.
Just got out of watching a small, beautiful little film called Lucky Lu. Half social realism, half misery porn. It’s about a Taiwanese immigrant in NYC getting ready for his wife and daughter to arrive. The day before they do, he finds out the rent money he trusted a friend to deliver never made it. Suddenly facing eviction, he has to figure out how to keep his family housed, while still trying to spend a meaningful day with his daughter. It hums with a constant, low-level anxiety, but the cinematography, the score, and a daughter who’s far more emotionally literate than her age suggests kept me watching, & hoping that a miracle might actually happen. The final shot broke me, but hey, the lead actor, Chang Chen (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; A Brighter Summer Day), showed up for a Q&A, which helped me emotionally recover. 8/10
Yea from what I read he’d multiple heard previous takes and had an idea, the movie presents it as if he just was told the key and then went from there having never heard anything before.
Happy Madison films continue to be an utter dumpster fire. Mortal Engines - 7/10 Little Nicky - 2/10 Hook - 6/10 The New Barbarians - 6/10 Once Upon a Time in China and America - 8/10
I’m not sure how I would feel about Little Nicky today. I have not seen it since it came out. It’s probably the only Sandler film from that era that I haven’t rewatched.
Little Nicky is still a solid 6/10 if you grew up with it. The soundtrack (plus the existence of this video) alone bump it to a 6.5:
A much better run of films with this next five - The Quiet Earth - 8.5/10 Nineteen Eighty-Four - 7.5/10 Wild Style - 7.5/10 Bad Day at Black Rock - 10/10 Marty Supreme - 8/10
One Battle After Another - 9.5/10 That final scene feels a little on the nose, but it's hard to overstate just how incredible Sean Penn is at riding the line between parody and realism as the bootlicker chud archetype. Essential, timely, and thrilling cinema made by questionable people.
Beat Street - 7.5/10 The Animal - 1.5/10 Taken - 5.5/10 The A-Team - 6.5/10 The Pirates of Blood River - 6/10
I also saw that in theaters, I only remember them falling through the sky in a tank or something and shooting stuff