Watching
My last 10 watched from Letterboxd.
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The Lighthouse
Having seen Eggers’ last two movies since this was released, The Lighthouse has lost a little bit of its luster. Still a great two-hander with brilliant performances by Dafoe and Pattinson, but it drags on a bit at times. The 4K release doesn’t do it any favors either, since much of the film is shot in low light with shallow depth of field. Man, that ending though.
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A Minecraft Movie
Video game movies are tricky because you have a checklist of things from the game you have to squeeze in references to for the fans but you also have to find a a way to make it fun for the uninitiated. Jared Hess may be the perfect director to deliver seemingly non sequiturs in a fun way. There’s definitely some Napoleon Dynamite DNA here. Jack Black is in full Jack Black mode and shares a Point Break-esque homoerotic bond with a similarly over-the-top Jason Momoa. This checked all the boxes for my Minecraft-loving 6-year-old but also had me cracking up a lot more than I thought I would.
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Unforgiven
Most of this movie is fine but the last 20 minutes or so are incredible. So many great lines and seeing Eastwood become the legend that was alluded to for most of the movie is sublime. Hackman really shines here as the villainous sheriff who talks a good game but turns out to be about as good a sheriff as he is a carpenter.
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Black Bag
On second watch I picked up a lot of clues I missed the first time around. This movie is a brisk 94 minutes and doesn’t waste much time. All of the spycraft stuff is just set dressing and an excuse to watch a bunch of smart, sexy people in beautifully-lit environments verbally spar with each other. More movies like this, please!
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Ripley
I finally got around to finishing this sublime adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. Robert Elswit’s cinematography is stunning. Picturesque Italy is captured in gorgeous black-and-white and nearly every shot could be a painting. I loved Andrew Scott as Ripley, a much more calculating take than Matt Damon’s version. And Mauricio Lombardi is delightful as Inspector Ravini, who always seems to be both a step ahead and a step behind Ripley at every moment. The pacing may seem slow as the series likes to luxuriate in every detail, but I loved every minute of it.
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Subservience
This movie features more broken glass than Die Hard. If there’s a lesson to be learned from movies like this and Companion it’s stop having sex with your robots.
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Under Suspicion
This movie is so incredibly awful that even two of the greatest actors of our time couldn’t elevate it. How Hackman and Freeman read this script and agreed to do this movie I’ll never know. The whole thing builds up to some noir-like twist and then it just ends with a whimper. I’d expect something at least a bit more entertaining from the director of Predator 2 and the writer of Point Break. The production looks like a bad network TV procedural, complete with overlays of the cast’s photos over the opening credits. If I had to guess I’d say that Jeffrey Epstein wrote this, or at least someone who had been to his island. Yeesh.
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Michael Clayton
I am Shiva, the god of death.
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1917
The oner is like a high-wire act. Difficult to pull off but leaves its audience breathless when it’s pulled off successfully. It’s been popular in recent series like Adolescence and The Studio, and while 1917 uses some trickery to achieve the illusion of one, long continuous shot, its sheer ambition tops any oners in recent memory. The logistics that must have gone into this to make it work are mind-boggling. The film is gorgeously shot by Roger Deakins and George MacKay gives an impressive and physically challenging performance.
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Sicario
This popped up on Netflix and my immediate reaction was “I guess I’m watching Sicario again!” God, this movie is incredible. Just a perfect storm of directing, acting, writing, cinematography, scoring. There’s very little downtime in its 2+ hour runtime. Del Toro is especially restrained and badass here. And a great, vulnerable performance by Emily Blunt.