Poster for the movie The Girl Who Cried Pearls
CHALLENGE COMPLETE!
LesIsMore watched The Girl Who Cried Pearls (2025) to complete the "2026 Nominees" challenge for 2026 Week 11
Poster for the movie Butterfly
CHALLENGE COMPLETE!
LesIsMore watched Butterfly (2025) to complete the "2026 Nominees" challenge for 2026 Week 11
Pretty crazy how important the blockade of a trade route is right now
Knocked off all the Best Picture nominees already, but still some omissions!
Blue Moon
Song Sung Blue
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
It Was Just An Accident
Sirat
The Voice of Hind Rajab
Zootopia 2
Arco
Elio
Kokuho
The Ugly Stepsister
I hate this. Your work is the best and deserves more. Placing a few orders!
The always-welcome category of last year’s films nominated for award! Now I wish I’d saved Train Dreams for a week. Gonna have to dig as I’ve checked all the Best Picture boxes.
It was going on one, two in the morning, and we were shooting what I felt was an important scene for me, when he makes an attempt to be quote-unquote straight, in a suit, and at the end of it he gets emotional and locks himself in the other room. And I felt like, I’m not getting what I want—I’m not happy with it. Mike was happy with it. He called me the next day and said, “I know you weren’t happy with the scene last night. Believe me, we wouldn’t have gone home if I had felt we weren’t getting it.” And then he sort of became my psychiatrist and said, “You find it difficult to be happy, don’t you? You find it difficult to enjoy things.” And I said, “Well, sometimes. Last night was about feeling too tired and not feeling I was reaching what I needed to reach for the scene.” He talked to me then about when he was making, I don’t know whether it was Virginia Woolf or The Graduate. He said, “I didn’t enjoy it for a second. I was worried about so many things.” And then he said, “You know, this is never going to happen again quite this way. You should try to allow yourself to enjoy this more. Take a minute a day, and then add a minute the next day, and another minute. Pretty soon, you’ll have hours of happiness.”
The Birdcage opened thirty years ago today, so in its honor, I want to share one of my favorite stories about Mike Nichols that didn't make it into my biography. This is from an interview I did with Nathan Lane.
A screenshot from the video game Yakuza Zero. The dialogue reads, “Kiryu: What’s wrong? Is it the billionaires again?”
Absolute pain in the ass when I was reviewing Fallout and rewound constantly for quotes and screengrabs.
#LetterboxdFriday
#Last4Watched
"why did you become a writer" because no one gave a shit about my special interests growing up. now i make them everyone else's problem. next question
Wanted to pick something with prominent hands, and no fewer than three! Checked another spaghetti Western off the watchlist: Find a Place to Die, a remake of 1954's Garden of Evil. An average outing with a couple good set pieces and the original Captain Pike, Jeffrey Hunter, as our tortured lead.
it's more fucked up because garfield was the one who took that saudi money to do the riyadh comedy circuit.
Poster for the movie Find a Place to Die
CHALLENGE COMPLETE!
LesIsMore watched Find a Place to Die (1968) to complete the "In Their Hands" challenge for 2026 Week 10
Love when the challenge fits into my already planned viewings! Train Dreams was my last Best Picture winner to check off (got to see it in a theater!) and Joel Edgerton holding an axe on one poster slots it here. Wonderful film about the beauty in a quiet life that made me sob through the credits.
Poster for the movie Train Dreams
CHALLENGE COMPLETE!
LesIsMore watched Train Dreams (2025) to complete the "In Their Hands" challenge for 2026 Week 10
Here’s some watchlist options:
Salvation
Fright Night
Fantastic Planet
Old Henry
Endgame
She Hate Me
A Bittersweet Life
Snowpiercer
Ballerina
Handsome Guys
Sleuth
Jackie Brown
Force of Evil
Barb Wire
Find a Place to Die
Shampoo
Casino
The Lady in Red
Targets
Steel Dawn
The Accountant 2
Ella McCay
Love the openness of this. Here’s some recent watches that would fit:
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die
Bad Lieutenant
Audition
Send Help
Con Air
Trafic
KPop Demon Hunters
Child's Play
Safety Last!
Lady Snowblood
High and Low
xXx
The Secret Agent
A Late Quartet
Sisu: Road to Revenge
Hard Boiled
Michael B. Jordan holding two Actor Awards
I didn't realize everyone who won for the ensemble cast got one and briefly thought they gave him two for winning Best Actor as a bit
You know, for kids!
#LetterboxdFriday
#Last4Watched
Rise of Skywalker was this basic idea but in movie form, and it tanked Star Wars as a theatrical franchise for almost a decade. And on TV, outside of Andor, even the better shows were catering to a rapidly shrinking audience of the hardcore.
I've been thinking about how this has already played out in games - there was a massive push to convince the industry and world that there was this huge audience of angry reactionary gamers who weren't getting what they demanded. And it turned out there weren't that many and they don't buy games
It's hilarious that they've convinced themselves that there's a massive, under-served audience segment just yearning for more right-wing content if only someone would give it them. It doesn't exist! The people they're talking about already only watch TV and entertain themselves by bitching about it
The plans....
Here's some options on the Criterion Channel:
- Last Hurrah for Chivalry
- Last Summer
- Last Holiday
- The Final Insult
- Five Star Final
- The End of Summer
- The End of the Day
- Raven's End
- No End
- The End of the Affair
Delightfully devilish, Joyce!
Been on a French film kick this month, easy to add Last Year at Marienbad for this week's challenge! Technically a different meaning of "last," but you can read finality in it. (Along with many other things, this film begging for interpretation.) Beautiful film, visuals that feel very proto-Kubrick.
Poster for the movie Last Year at Marienbad
CHALLENGE COMPLETE!
LesIsMore watched Last Year at Marienbad (1961) to complete the "Finality" challenge for 2026 Week 9
