Continuing my commitment to write something about every movie I watch! Here are all the films I've seen since the last potpourri post.
Captain America: Brave New World (2025) - Theater - Watched 2/21/25
You can almost fully, tactile-like *feel* the rewrites and the shuffling that happened here and it lead to some totally gonzo moments. To be wicked honest I tend to not care about things like this, since I just like to watch movies and have the world be as it is in the film; I like to just accept what I'm offered. But from an almost like, writers' workshop perspective I find this whole thing fascinating.
One my wife and I couldn't stop tooling on is that we have the concept of the white pills that Ross is taking, right? Well we need the pills because that's how we've decided that Ross is gonna end up being a Hulk, and we've decided he's being tricked into taking them because they're the magical cure for Ross' heart--so the pills need to be there, we're wedded to them.
But now we also need to communicate that information to the audience, so let's have Sam stumble into some info about the pills at the secret base, but not know what they are yet. Ok good nice yeah, cool, perfect. But wait, Sam is gonna wonder what they are...hmm ok so Sam would want to figure out what the pills are. Who do we have who can analyze these? Could we get Ruffalo into this kinda-sorta-Hulk sequel? Nah. How about a chemist-based character at all? Nah. Let's have Sam's Seal Team Pure White Friend just kinda know a guy.
Ok we're in our final act--it's gonna be HULK TIME BABY ok cool. But wait, we can't have Sam know what the pills are yet right, because we want the final act to happen. But we have to address that the Seal Team Man isn't going to like, slow roll the pill analysis, and we can't just leave that hanging. Do we maybe film some cut-ins that are Sam calling him and him being in a lab going "hey Seal Team I need that analysis" or whatever? Nah can't do that because Sam doesn't have any idea that there's urgency attached to it. Hmm...I guess we have to take Seal Team off the board entirely? What are our options to kill him? Oh let's use our mind control thing; it's perfect! Oh wait no because we already did a whole thing earlier to prove none of the Seal Team guys are compromised. What villains do we still have on the board? Sidewinder doesn't have a reason to...ah damn I guess we just need to have Brain Man do it. So let's have Brain Man shoot him? No that would draw attention I suppose, and Sam might just fly back to that. So maybe have it look like an accident? But how? I guess he does like, sound based mind control so he'll have a...sound...device? That does sound-based...heart attacks? Let's not worry about why he didn't use that at any prior time, or on the Admiral and Admiral's wife he killed earlier.
In addition to all of that, the only remotely interesting fight choreography was in the very very beginning and it felt. so. slow. Which was a shame.
Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) - Watched At Home - Watched 3/21/25
My wife's pick for movie night this week, while we also at our Lenten Friday fish+chips just to round out the whole Jesus-ness of it all hah!
What I really loved about this adaptation is it felt so...lawless? I don't know how to say what I mean exactly, but it didn't feel like a full on musical *adaptation* but it also didn't feel like a sort of 'National Theater Live presented by Fandango' sort of thing where they just filmed the stage.
It felt like a music video, in an era of fairly nascent music videos (I suppose you could more accurately say each number was its own video)
Fateful Findings (2013) - Watched At Home - Watched 4/17/25
Some lovely friends brought over Fateful Findings last night for a movie night, and I'll admit that I hadn't heard of Breen before watching, and now I'm left absolutely fascinated.
There's a scene where he's talking to his lover while eating (handling? holding? ...it's ostensibly eating...but i digress) a plate of unadorned spinach. He then sets it down and we get a cut to the plate of spinach precariously balanced on some papers, then it falls, and we cut back and forth to each characters' face as they mischievously smile.
I have to say: I was both flabbergasted and hypnotized by this movie and wound up finding it incredibly charming if only for the fact that choices were being made. I'll take "interesting" over "boring" any day, and Fateful Findings was never boring in a traditional sense, but was instead "boring" in the way watching an improv troupe fail their way through a performance--there's something there for your brain to digest, like, "why did they say that? why did they make that choice?"
Brecht once said something to the effect of it being better to be human than to have good taste, and while all signs point to Breen being an alien being of some sort who has borderline wretched taste, it would be hard to argue that there isn't *something* very human in this movie
The Philadelphia Story (1940) - Watched At Home - Watched 4/18/25
My wife and I watched this (at her choosing!) for a stay-in dinner-and-a-movie date night and we both absolutely fell in love. Firstly, I have to say that the script these actors are working with is absolutely unreal--it's witty, it's genuinely funny, it's smart, it's layered and overall it's just brilliant. I love this sort of stage adaptation, where it's "just" a parlor play with people talking back and forth--it moves quickly (but not fast) and just melts like butter on your eyes and ears.
We also have, in Grant, Hepburn and Stewart, three incredible actors at the peak of their powers. All three of them turn in gems here, with choices and subtle touches and reads that I can imagine would make any aspiring actor (then or now) want to just give it up. I mean that for real like, the work being done here is so pitch-perfect it would be hard to watch and not be discouraged. I suppose the flip side would be to learn from what they're doing and apply it to ones own performance style.
You just can't take your eyes off any of the three of them--or any of the supporting actors either! Everyone turns in the performance of a career here.
This is one of those sorts of older films that I wish I could show to folks who tend not to watch older movies; The Philadelphia Story is about as perfect as films get, and you absolutely need to check it out
Thunderbolts* (2025) - Theater - Watched 5/2/25
The back of my journal has this two-page spread that has one hundred areas for entries--I decided to use those pages only for art (tv, games, movies, songs, books, whatever) that like "deserved" a spot back there. I didn't want to create a rubric, I wanted to shoot from the hip, like, "is this top 100 *whatever* of the year worthy?" This is my first year using those pages even though past years of this journal have had them, so I don't even know if I'm pacing myself well. We're now in May and so it stands to reason there should be what, almost 40 entries by now, but there's not even 25 yet.
And so I come to Thunderbolts.
Reader, I cried at Thunderbolts. There's a sequence where Florence Pugh comes across a memory of herself having more or less tried to kill herself and I thought it was incredibly effective. I really loved what Pugh was doing the whole movie. I really dug how for the first let's call it 15 seconds of the movie you're thinking, "oh is Florence Pugh going to jump off this building (bad way)" but it turns out she's jumping off the building (spy way). And also I never saw the TV show he came from but I thought the guy Wyatt Russell was playing was great too.
It moved me! My wife and I saw this for a date night and we laughed and just kinda had a blast.
I thought everyone was genuinely funny and charming and there was a lot of earnest feeling! I don't know if y'all will be able to pick up what I'm putting down here but there were quips but not like, the bad kind.
I told a friend that my criteria for including something in the back of the journal is whether I really felt anything interesting or *thought* about the art, because that seemed like a good barometer. And here I am now two weeks after having seen this thinking, "huh, I really had a fun time with that". I guess that's that.
Imagine Me & You (2005) - Watched At Home - Watched 6/5/25
[disappearing from a dinner party with people who previously paid you a large sum of money to go sit on their roof during the rain] hmm how long until someone comes up and notices me
This movie was very cute
Ford v Ferrari (2019) - Watched At Home - Watched 6/8/25
Absolutely loved this--totally engrossed and entertained. Just total "guys rock" stuff with Matt Damon doing a pretty solid Tommy Lee Jones impression
The Phoenician Scheme (2025) - Theater - Watched 6/29/25
Had an absolute blast with this; I could watch Jeffrey Wright's sequence a thousand times. Also it's a hell of a thing to see Wes Anderson's take on 'Silence'
Predator: Killer of Killers (2025) - Watched At Home - Watched 7/3/25
What can I say but *ABSOLUTELY* hell yes. Had a total blast from start to finish with this. Animation was cool, fights were awesome--what more can a gal want.
"You failed, Grendel King" goes so hard
A Real Pain (2024) - Watched At Home - Watched 7/4/25
Jessie Eisenberg plays an introverted person with OCD who doesn't deal well with chaos and is mostly introverted, which is, well, pretty relatable to me personally
Culkin's performance is stunning, and honestly so is Eisenberg's
I really enjoyed this
The Big Lebowski (1998) - Watched At Home - Watched 7/5/25
Every time I rewatch this throughout my life I find new things that I love about it
All timer, simple as.
Superman (2025) - Theater - Watched 7/13/25
As a demonstration of why I'm not a very good writer I'm sitting here unable to really articulate my thoughts without using the words "heart" or "earnest", so I'll put it this way: there's a lot of my sensibility in this, and I didn't expect that, so I ended up enjoying this a lot more than I thought
I really liked that it's not sexless; I liked that people seemed to have real feelings and relationships; I thought Krypto was very cute
I think if you asked me, "hey you wanna watch a Superman movie? Which one?" I'd still want to watch Man of Steel first, but I dug this a lot—I even cried!
The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) - Theater - Watched 7/26/25
What a fun time this was! I wish there was way, way more Herbie though—he was adorable and I have a huge soft spot for little robots
This movie marks two consecutive Marvel films that I've really really enjoyed largely because of the chemistry of the casts and the emotional human element. If they can keep that up I think I'll really find myself looking forward to the next ones 😅
Mountainhead (2025) - Watched At Home - Watched 8/4/25
I thought the one bit of "explain horrendous thing using tech bro language" stretched out to movie length wasn't very good really, but it got me through my bike ride
Jurassic World Rebirth (2025) - Watched At Home - Watched 8/6/25
Watched this on the bike today after definitely thinking of it as "I'll watch it on an international flight this fall" sort of thing and you know what? Graded on the curve of "sat in a plane seat / sat on an indoor trainer" this was pretty damn entertaining!
ScarJo honestly seems like she's having a blast, and the main museum guy was pretty charming and really sold the meeting-the-dinos scene!
Turns out if you combine all of the beats from the first JP with all of the beats from Aliens you get a pretty solid flick
Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) - Watched At Home - Watched 8/11/25
I had always heard good things about this--peoples' opinions always seemed to crop up around the release of anything kinda adjacent to it, and I think the first time anyone ever recommended it to me was after seeing the trailer for 'The Social Network' back in the day
I finally watched it and I'll be damned--it is pretty damn watchable! The Pitt heads (myself included) will absolutely go "holy smokes look at twink Noah Wyle" and also John DiMaggio which I think is pretty funny.
Everyone turns in like, pretty rad made-for-tv-movie-melodrama style performances (positive comp) like Anthony Michael Hall is wearing a Bill Gates Noh Mask
In addition to all of that, this is a fascinating cultural/historical document because sitting here from 2025 you want to project your consciousness back in time to 1999 and be like, "oh my god just wait you haven't seen the half of it!" Predating the iPod and everything is absolutely so wild, since I think it's what spares any of it from feeling like the sort of hagiographies that the Fassbender one is
It's a breezy watch and I gotta recommend you check it out! Oh oh the first like 5 minutes gives big time heavy 'Sneakers' energy, in a way that I think is really charming
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) - Watched At Home - Watched 8/18/25
I say this as a someone who was president of her high school's drama club Sophomore, Junior and Senior year. I say this out of love
I bet this absolutely kills at theater kid hangouts
Eddington (2025) - Watched At Home - Watched 8/23/25
This movie made me think of how someone in my life who was an academic of theater and a great actor and director once said, as we walked out of a very flawed play, "they went a little wide, there."
High and Low (1963) - Watched At Home - Watched 8/24/25
Impossible for me to say anything that dozens of folks haven't already said, so I'll just say I loved every second. The way everything is staged, the layering of the actors on the screen, the procedural, the performances...all as good as it gets!
