Ryan (Caves of Altamira)

The ship is great and all, but that sequence belongs to Goldsmith.

How much does seeing the biplane sequence in IMAX matter to you?

It's a good sequence, but it's about the only time IMAX adds anything in the roughly three hours of it all.

FINALWRECK is not one of the worst blockbusters of the last ten years, but, gee, is that incoherent, ineffectual opening hour dispiriting.

i figured it out. and i hate to say it’s largely an age thing, but it’s true. a lot replies on this site are giving Facebook.

I'm good with this kind of exposition, but I see it as an exaggeration of the spy genre's general tendency to go in for this sort of thing

It's very much a spy movie about spy movies

(The exposition in INCEPTION is really, really bad)

I would also say the exposition is actually a lot denser and more jargon-y than the very, very "spoonfed" stuff you got in INCEPTION

More INTERSTELLAR-y

Here I am in 2025, ready to die on the "SHOWGIRLS is a masterpiece" hill

I don't know what to say, beyond noting that I used to think De Palma was merely trashy until something clicked in my twenties and I realized that my reaction to De Palma was more about the way I'd been blindly and uncritically equating the arbitrary aesthetics of "good taste" with "good cinema"

They do, but believe me, a lot of that exposition was barely intelligible when it showed in theaters

(I love TENET fwiw)

Here's what I wrote about De Palma a long time ago:

theotherjournal.com/2013/03/de-p...

But I'll also say that learning to esteem "lurid" storytelling and its aesthetics was an important part of my development.

"Trash" storytelling can be more vital and compelling than "highbrow"/"tasteful" stuff by virtue of being more instinctual and primal. It's closer to the "id" of it all.

De Palma is a generally sarcastic filmmaker who is fundamentally fascinated by disrupting the immersion by exposing the artifice of cinema.

That he pivots back and forth between the tawdry and the transcendent is a feature, not a bug. The whiplash is purposeful (and part of the fun).

This is a bad take, my friend

The new White Lotus season feels like a step backward after the more effervescent season two, but I'm enjoying the heck out of what Parker Posey is bringing to the table

Stay tuned for the "Will Mikey Madison be the next Bond girl?" stories

I haven't seen it yet. I'm saving it for a special day.

The Brutalist is a mess, but I find its messiness endearing.

It's desperately trying to make the Next Great American Epic and I have a soft spot for follies of that type.

That said, at least it's not your typical Academy pick, so that's something.

So many of you who have well-formed, insightful taste have me second-guessing myself on this, but, outside of its last ten or fifteen minutes, I really didn't like ANORA all that much.

It being both a Palme d'Or winner and a Best Picture winner is a real head-scratcher for me!

CONCLAVE is sturdy "airport novel" cinema.

That's a film genre we could use more of, not less of, if only because this sort of middlebrow story should be told in a couple of mildly entertaining hours rather than dragged out into twelve-episode streaming fluff.

I like how CITIZEN SLEEPER 2 expands on the gameplay and world of the first, but it loses a bit of the narrative punch of its predecessor.

It feels almost incomplete. I don't know if there's a DLC planned, but I could see that pulling things together.

Doechii ate

It's amazing how perfect that reunion episode is

Lovely stuff.

Rod, this is one of your best pieces.

Why can't we make poor choices and still be functional

I am so here for a MUNICH re-revaluation because I have always held that that movie is one of The Beard's very best

It turns out that when you get a full night's sleep, you can actually find some motivation and focus

Whaddya know

Yes.